Booing

'I came here on an academy contract for peanuts. Now I've got enough for the odd Gucci cap but there's f**k-all money in rugby. I'm 23, I've got zero cartilage, my shoulder has been ripped off the bone and I'm renting out this flat.

'The guy who lived here before me, Dom Ryan, retired at 28 because his brain was fried [he retired because of concussion] and he had nothing to fall back on. Who knows what I'll do? These Man City kids are 18 and buying £3million houses.'

A pair of crutches are still propped up against one of the kitchen units. Genge recently finished a five-month rehabilitation from surgery, which has left him with a permanent loss of feeling in his right knee. 

I damaged the cartilage behind the kneecap,' he says. 'They basically cut the nerve so I can't feel the front of my knee now. Instead of removing the cartilage, they put an incision and stitched it back on with a metal rod.

'When I came around from the op I thought, 'F**k… the anaesthetic's lasting ages'. Three days gone and I can't feel my kneecap. I phoned the surgeon and he said, 'That's dusted. Gone'. It hurts walking up stairs but so does compressing your spine for 80 minutes.

'I took a few painkillers and thought, "This isn't enough" but I stopped as they're a drug. I was quite freaked out about it but I'm used to it now. How many times do you want to feel your knee, anyway? I'll touch my left leg instead!'

and how they fell after another loss........

People on Twitter have been doing my f*****g head in,' he says. 'Keyboard warriors. We've been s***. We know we've been s***. We don't need reminding every minute of every day.'

Reaching for his phone, he says: 'Look at this tweet: "Interview: See what Ellis had to say about his rampaging run in Paris". This guy replies: "You lost again". Really? Did we? He's there telling me the days of Dean Richards and Martin Johnson have gone, then he starts asking me for free tickets. I know we've lost. I've got to sit on the plane and think on it for two hours when I'm caffeined out my f*****g eyeballs. It's doing my head in.

'It's going to take time to get back to where we were. The core of the club — Ed Slater, Logovi'i Mulipola, Tom Croft, Marcos Ayerza, Pete Betham — has gone. There have been a few panic signings but no one is intentionally trying to drag the club down.

'If you think we ain't trying, come to Oval Park on a Tuesday, pick up a tackle pad, say all this stuff and you'll get spat out like a tumble dryer. If you wanna go and watch Wasps instead, go and watch Wasps. If you want to support us, support us and we'll do our best to repay you. Rant over. I guess life's all right if that's your biggest worry.